Mirren, Mirren In the Hall, Mirren, Mirren Takes Them All–Murphy, Whitaker, Hudson WIn SAG Awards

The SAG awards, which are not known as the Saggies, are usually predictable, but last night’s show found Little Miss Sunshine winning the ensemble category. Back to business as usual, Helen Mirren repeated her Golden Globes win for The Queen, and for another queen in a TV movie or miniseries. Steve Carell also won two, but we don’t think of them together.

Forest Whitaker, also a Globe winner, won again for his performace as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Both Mirren and Whitaker are also nominated for Oscars and they both play real people. Odd, isn’t it?

Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy both won for outstanding supporting players for Dreamgirls. Murphy won a Golden Globe and is up for an Oscar. If Eddie Murphy wins an Oscar, he’ll be the only SNL cast member to do so. (Joan Cusack and Dan Ackroyd have both been nominated and band leader Howard Shore won twice for his Lord of the Rings scores and for best song.)

Of the last 24 winners in the guild’s leading actor categories, 17 have won Academy Awards. No Oscar has ever gone to a performer who has not been nominated for a SAG award. And, actors make up about 22 percent of Oscar voters, making them the biggest single voting group for the awards–which goes a long way in explaining Ordinary People’s win over Raging Bull.

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